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Cheese Soup in Bread Bowls

Cheese Soup Recipe

I completely understand that a 64 degree day in January in Kansas is not the day most people would choose to make a homemade cheese soup recipe or homemade bread. However, I have been getting quite a few recipes in my inbox for soups, one of the blogs I follow posted a soup recipe, and it has been a long while since I spent some quality cooking time in my kitchen. Oh, and it IS National Soup Month! I decided to make homemade cheese soup in bread bowls to serve for dinner tonight.

In my refrigerator I had some smoked Swiss cheese that one of my friends smoked for me. I have got to get a cheese smoker. Actually, I shouldn’t. I do not need more of a reason to eat cheese. That smoky goodness was just begging to be incorporated into my soup. Also, cheese soup was one of my dad’s favorites and I have not had any cheese soup since he has been in a nursing home post-stroke in December of 2012.

I started to search the worldwide recipe web and found what I was looking for in both a cheese recipe and a bread bowl recipe.

The bread bowl was awesome. It was crispy on the outside, soft on the inside with great flavor. It was a perfect vessel for the smoky Swiss cheese soup.

With the holiday break over and everyone back to the school and work routine it was just the four of us at home for dinner. The girls were intrigued, to say the least about some things. Why is dinner soup and bread and how was the soup going to stay inside of the bread.

Their concerns were quickly allayed. They saw that the thickness of the hollowed out bowl definitely held the soup just fine. They also realized that this was not just a slice of enriched white bread paired with a sodium laden reconstituted can of something. This was hearty bread and hearty soup.

The girls enjoyed the experience immensely and loved the bread bowls. Granted, the soup was eaten out of the bread bowls, but my youngest 2 daughters did not inherit my love of cheese soup. The Hubs enjoyed the soup and the bread bowl, however he was taken aback at how Daughter Number Four chose to eat her soup. She drank the soup out of the bread quickly so she could pick up her bread bowl and eat it without rhyme or reason to the method or the mess. Then she just chewed through one side and kept going!

I do recommend both of these morsels if you are wanting a warm and hearty meal on a cold day (not a 64 degree day) or if you are a lover of bread, soup, and cheese like I am. This is a truly delicious cheese soup recipe with or without the bread bowl. I am convinced, though, that my dad would have loved both.

Instructions

In a Dutch oven, sauté onion in butter until translucent, not brown. Add in hot celery and carrot mixture. In a small bowl, mix together flour, cornstarch, paprika and baking soda, and add to onion mixture. Using a whisk, stir frequently and cook a few minutes. Do not brown. Add hot milk and hot stock to pan, whisking until smooth. Cook, stirring frequently, until thickened and hot. Remove Dutch oven from heat and add cheese to hot soup, whisking until melted. Salt and pepper to taste. Ladle hot soup into fresh bread bowls. Serve immediately.

Ah – yes. I cook very old-fashioned, and tend to speak a few generations above my age. Sorry…
I found this definition on Wikipedia!

A Dutch oven is a thick-walled (usually cast iron but also ceramic and clay) cooking pot with a tight-fitting lid. Dutch ovens have been used as cooking vessels for hundreds of years. They are called casserole dishes in English speaking countries other than the United States (“casserole” means “pot” in French), and cocottes in French. They are similar to both the Japanese tetsunabe and the Sač, a traditional Balkan cast-iron oven, and are related to the South African Potjie and the Australian Bedourie oven.